Gov. Chris Christie is joined by U.S. Housing & Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan at the Sea Bright Firehouse at 2 p.m. for a news conference on rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy. HUD this week announced it will release the initial $1.8 billion in recovery funds to New Jersey.

Earlier, at 11:15 a.m., Christie and Schools Development Authority chief executive officer Marc Larkins are in Union City, where Democratic Sen. Brian Stack is mayor, to cut the ribbon at the grand opening of Colin Powell Elementary School.

Senate voting session, 2 p.m. in Trenton.

Lengthy agenda includes bills that would restrict minors under 17 from using indoor tanning beds; stop the unemployment tax for businesses from increasing in July; change the public records and public meetings laws; bar retailers from charging a fee to pay with a credit card; increase the earned income tax credit; ask voters to raise the minimum and provide for annual cost-of-living increases; and object to recommended changes in the school funding formula.

Senate Judiciary Committee meets, 10 a.m. in Committee Room 4. Agenda includes interviews with 16 nominees to become Superior Court judges, including Joseph Oxley of Monmouth County and Middlesex County Freeholder Director Christopher Rafano. Full Senate votes on them could follow later today.

Health & Senior Services (10 a.m., CR16) Immunity for medical-malpractice damages for health care professionals who volunteer to respond to an unfamiliar patient’s emergency at a hospital or health care facility. Civil and criminal immunity for prescribing approved drugs to treat an opioid overdose. Let pharmacists vaccinate children 14 and older. Let voters decide whether to permit terminally ill patients to end their life by taking a prescribed drug.

Higher Education (10:30 a.m., CR12) Require colleges to provide to prospective students certain cost, loan, and debt information in financial aid shopping sheet. Allow & encourages colleges to provide three credits to high school students who complete the Boys State or Girls State programs.

Housing & Local Government (2 p.m., CR15) Prohibit local government agency from employing person on paid leave from local government agency of another county or municipality. Permit towns to fine creditors $2,500 a day for not maintaining vacant residential properties being foreclosed.

Telecommunications & Utilities (10 a.m., CR9) Require that power suppliers purchase a certain amount of the electricity they supply to customers each year from combined heat & power plants.

Governor’s NJ SAFE Task Force, which will make recommendations for reducing violence after studying gun control, addiction, mental health and school safety, holds a public hearing from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Center for Law and Justice at Rutgers University’s School of Law in Newark.

First Lady Mary Pat Christie celebrates Black History Month with a presentation of artwork from Wendel White[1], an award-winning photographer, at 3:30 p.m. at Drumthwacket in Princeton.

Sens. Sandra Bolden Cunningham, M. Teresa Ruiz and Raymond Lesniak and Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman hold an 11 a.m. Statehouse news conference to announce legislation that seeks to reduce New Jersey’s recidivism rates by helping ex-offenders find work. They’re joined by Cornell William Brooks, executive director of the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice; John Harmon, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey; Alfred Koeppe, CEO of the Newark Alliance; and Micah Kahn from the Integrated Justice Alliance.

At the concurrent Vegetable Growers Association of New Jersey convention, farmers and school officials responsible for buying food for student meals are trained on using Twitter to facilitate the sale of Jersey Fresh produce.

Gov. Harold Hoffman was born on this date in 1896. Hoffman, a Republican, was South Amboy mayor, assemblyman and member of the House of Representatives before serving as New Jersey’s 41st governor from 1935 to 1938.

At one point, Hoffman was a reporter, assistant city editor and then sports editor for the Perth Amboy Evening News, which later changed its name to The News Tribune, eventually merged with The Home News and is now part of Gannett’s New Jersey newspaper group.

Here’s a recap of Hoffman’s political rise, from the Governors of New Jersey[6]book; does any of this sound eerily familiar?: He leveraged an appointment to statewide office (motor vehicle commissioner) into a Jersey-wide political profile. A good campaigner and public speaker, he provided few details about how he’d handle issues as governor, then won in an upset in a Democratic state. Skeptics thought the leading Democratic boss, Frank Hague, sat out the race to help Hoffman win. He was soon seen as a prospect for national office. (The parallels with Christie taper off there; his top legislative accomplishment was enacting — through an alliance with Hague Democrats — a sales tax.)

If you think that relations between Christie and the press can be contentious, consider this: Twice, Hoffman punched reporters. Can you imagine if there had been YouTube in the Depression era?

After World War II, Hoffman returned to an appointed state job — until he was suspended by new Gov. Robert Meyner on suspicions he had embezzled funds. He confirmed stealing more than $300,000 from the state and a bank in a deathbed confession to his daughter about an apparent career-long[7] pattern of activity, through a letter opened after his 1954 death.

In the letter to his daughter, Hoffman urged her not to allow her son to enter politics: “It is a lousy game. In order to be elected, you must necessarily accept favors from a large number of people. If you attempt to repay them after being elected to office, it becomes wrongdoing. If you don’t, you are an ingrate.”